Many workplace environments include hazardous areas that can present health, safety, and environmental risks for employees. For example, in a manufacturing environment, industrial equipment with moving parts can be a serious threat to worker safety. In other cases, there are environments in which a high value work product needs to be protected from the employees. For example, food processing and packaging plants, pharmaceutical production plants, various semiconductor plants and the like may all require the employees to wear protective equipment to prevent contamination of the product. To help prevent worker injury and/or product contamination, workplace safety rules may require that each individual use and/or wear the appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) in various work areas of a production facility.
While PPE is often an effective means of protecting employees, PPE is only effective when it is used according to its intended function. Thus, non-compliance with PPE usage guidelines may result in various workplace injuries. In order to improve compliance, various approaches have been proposed to improve employee compliance with PPE usage standards. One method includes the use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology to help promote worker compliance with workplace safety rules. However, RFID technology merely detects the presence of the PPE in an area and does not verify that the PPE is being worn at all times while the employee is within the hazardous area.